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Security has been a big issue coming into the Beijing Games.Picture: Reuters

Tanks for the memory of Tiananmen 1989

Jacquelin Magnay | August 4, 2008

A GREAT big black tank, its turret and twin barrels staring
straight across the East Chang An Avenue, was parked out the front
of the official International Olympic Committee accommodation at
the swish Beijing Hotel last Friday.

Like these Olympic Games overall, the tank message for the local
population is starkly different to that conveyed to the
international visitors.

Westerners are taken aback, the image so confronting and
reminiscent of the Communist Party military might rolling through
Tiananmen Square in 1989, a lone Chinese student standing bravely
before the massacre.

It is a shock to see it now in the midst of a busy
thoroughfare.

But for the locals, it is a signal this is a very important
place indeed, that the bigwigs are in town and their presence
demands the ultimate respect.

For IOC president Jacques Rogge, a modest man who once declared
he would much prefer to stay in the Olympic Village with the
athletes, this fawning status by willing Chinese hosts has meant
some uncomfortable moments.

He is escorted everywhere by a bevy of Chinese beauties, their
long skirts slit to thigh, trained to show just eight teeth when
they smile. They totter in their shiny heels precisely eight paces
behind him.

Of course, when Rogge attended his first press conference in
Beijing on late Saturday night, he announced that he had no regrets
in handing the 2008 Olympics to China and predicted the magic of
the Games would take over immediately after Friday night's
spectacular opening ceremony.

But if the Chinese expected that their No. 1 guest would respond
to their obsequiousness with some implied gratitude, and perhaps
servitude, they may have been a little disappointed.

The prickly issues of media freedom and politics were addressed
by Rogge  sometimes with surprising frankness.

Initially he wanted to address the issue that had swamped and
surprised the IOC and the Beijing organisers: the initial failure
of the Chinese to live up to the promise of opening up the country
to the world through a free and unfettered internet. Rogge stressed
that the IOC had done no deal with the Chinese to censor the
net.

"I'm not going to apologise for something the IOC is not
responsible for," Rogge said.

"We are not running the internet in China. Chinese authorities
are running the internet in China."

So was the IOC naive? "We are idealists and idealism is
something that is linked with naivety, but we fight for causes that
we think are important and we want the media to work in the best
possible way."

Rogge highlighted that athletes competing in Beijing could
actually complain about China, if they felt like it, but within the
Olympic rules.

That means no protests in the Olympic Village or venues, but
they will be allowed to talk about their views to journalists in
press conferences and mixed zones and protest outside Olympic
venues on any issues that concern them: human rights, Tibet,
Taiwan, Darfur.

That means of course, that athletes might face immediate arrest
under Chinese laws, but he didn't go into that. Of chief concern
was maintaining the peace in the Olympic Village, which will house
205 nations and 10,500 athletes.

"If we allow political propaganda, it's the end of the harmony
of the Olympic Village, and the end of the harmony of the games,"
he said.

On drugs, Rogge said 17 athletes had been caught in recent
pre-Games testing.

"These are 17 cheats that will not falsify the competition."

Still, Rogge was mindful of congratulating the Chinese for their
organisation and saying there were no concerns, particularly
compared to four years ago when Athens was still completing
venues.

Yesterday the tank had gone. To where? No one knows.

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